


nothing lost, that may be found, if sought

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, M/M, Revenge, Rip Hunter Is Not A Good Guy, Seelie Court, Sorcerers, Suggestions of Mick Rory/Leonard Snart/Barry Allen, Wild Hunt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 12:15:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11509230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: Thanks to the Particle Accelerator explosion, the Rogues have forgotten that they were once rulers of a Fae Court.But after the Oculus, Len remembers -- and he's pretty pissed off about it all.





	nothing lost, that may be found, if sought

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JQ (musicmillennia)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicmillennia/gifts).



> For jq-piccadilly for the coldwave exchange! For her delightful prompt: "Mick, the Snarts, and their Rogues conned a fairy out of its kingdom. When the particle accelerator blew, their memories were wiped out by the raw magic it released—the Rogues even forgot they were the Rogues. But after Len gets swallowed by the Oculus, he’s able to find what he once was, and he’s determined to set things to rights (bonus points for Mick whump)."

Once upon a time, a halfling child met a sorcerer, and the world changed.

Sorcerers, a seventh son of a seventh daughter, are no longer common, but a halfling child, raised by man, is a very rare thing indeed. A lady of the Sidhe may go and frolic as she will, to send a year and a day in the company of the man of her choosing, but she ought be very careful of him who she chooses, for when the year and a day is almost up he may bind her in iron and slip an iron ring 'round her finger to keep her as his wife, and she'll not be able to leave until she's freed.

She screamed and she threatened and she begged the man for her freedom, but he did not listen - a lady of the Sidhe for a wife was too great a prize for him to forgo. 

She quieted and submitted, and he removed her chains, smug that no one would remove the ring upon her finger. She bore him a son and he rejoiced.

When five years and a day had passed from her imprisonment, she knelt before her boy and smiled. "Little one, little one," said she. "Won't you take off my ring?"

And she held her hand before him, and the ring flashed in the light.

"But it's yours, ima," he told her, confused. A child. 

"Take it," said she. "It would make me happy if you did, and I would owe you a favor - a great favor, a really big one."

The child smiled a gap-toothed smile, proud and happy of a sign of his mother's rarely-given affection - her attention often wandered and she was quite forgetful, the curly-haired maiden of the Sidhe - and he reached out with chubby fingers for the ring.

The man, having realized the danger of the date too late, bursts in through the kitchen door, shouting negation, but it is too late.

The ring is in the child's hand, and the lady is gone from the world of men forevermore.

The man is angry at the loss of his prize: he beats the boy, who does not understand.

The boy grows, and forgets, and is never told of his parentage, until a seventh son rescues him from strife and holds his hands and says, "You've got a faerie's eyes."

And so they meet, halfling child and sorcerer, and they smile, and the world shakes.

They grow and they grow, sorcerer and halfling child, and they collect to themselves the finest band of thieves the world has ever known, and they go forth to claim the halfling child's inheritance from the lands beyond the worlds of men.

"My mother is a queen," the sharp-eyed thief tells the standing stones and they open the way for him.

"My mother was a changeling," the silver-tongued liar tells the miserable humans trapped to serve the pleasure of the Underhill Lords, and they open the doors of the palace for him.

"My mother," he says to the furious faerie lady who challenges him too late, his hand upon the wellspring-tree which filtered the magic of the Underhill into its air and held its roof aloft in its branches, "owes me a favor."

The lady, whose eyes match the thief's precisely, slows and remembers what she has tried so hard to forget.

"If you steal this," she warns. "You will be stolen from in turn."

The thief smiles a terrible smile. "Let them try," he says. "Better to lose a victory well-won than a faerie lady's forgotten favor, o oath-breaker who bore me."

And he grasps the trunk of the tree with his will and is crowned by its laurels, and he gives laurels, too, to those who came with him: his sorcerer, his mortal sister, his friends among the men of the surface, even unto his new friends among the men trapped beneath the ground. The Lords and Ladies of the Sidhe bow before him, rage in their hearts, and they lead forth the strangest of Hunts – ridings of thieves, in search of games of cleverness and the riches of men - and all is well and joyful under his command.

But the Lords and Ladies of the Underhill know well how to wait. 

All was well, all went well, until that day.

Until the day of the explosion.

The explosion came and ravaged the halfling child's beloved city, an explosion made from a man who ran from the future and who learned its secrets, to whom a Lord of the Sidhe had given a cup full of forgetting-water to place at the explosion’s center.

And so it was that the halfling child forgot his throne -

The sorcerer burned -

The sister became entrapped in her father's house -

The friends of the Earth were caught in cages of steel and glass -

The friends of the Hill were scattered, remembering only their losses - 

And in this way they lost their throne of Underhill, returned in this way to the land of men, all but their strongest memories gone, scattered and purposeless.

And so ends the story.

Or so it would have been, if not for that rashly-promised favor. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"You are oft not wise, my son."

Len blinks a little, trying to make his eyes focus. He's lying in a bed as soft as clouds, and a beautiful woman - dark-skinned, curly-haired, and pale-eyed - sits by his bed. 

My son?

_Mother_.

"Ima," Len croaks before he can think better of it. He is sore all over and he feels young, as always, in her presence. 

It's not hard to feel younger than a woman who has lived centuries.

"My son," she says again, her voice as hard and as cool as marble. "I have paid my debt."

"Debt?"

"You freed me from my bindings," she says. "And so I free you from yours."

Bindings?

Len - _remembers._

The Accelerator explosion had forgetting-water in it - they'd been scattered when they'd been hit by it and they didn't remember - 

They.

His _Rogues_.

"You stole my Rogues from me," Len says. "For years, now."

His mother inclines her head in admission. The act was not hers, but she took no act to remedy it and so shares in the crime.

"Why now?"

Her nose wrinkles just the slightest bit. To be so blunt is not the fashion of the Sidhe. 

Len doesn't retract his question.

"You were about to die," she says begrudgingly. "I could not permit you to die ere I paid my debt. So I saved your life."

Len snorts. He doesn't have any illusions. "You wouldn't have if you didn't have a debt, so I bear no burden from it."

His mother looks a little approving. She always did prefer it when he cast off what she perceived to be his useless sentimentality. 

Well, she's about to be disappointed.

"Where are my Rogues?" Len demands.

"Still scattered," she says dismissively. "There are more important matters at hand."

"More important? Than my Rogues?"

"Yes," she says impatiently. "It concerns the throne."

Len arches his eyebrows.

"It is yet yours, my son," she says, leaning forward, her eyes intent. Nothing moves one of the Underhill like the possibility of politics, their long game of the centuries, the jockeying for power and position. "You are yet the Lord here."

Len scoffs.

"It is true," she insists. "You were challenged, of course, but even in your stupor you defeated all comers, and none have found where you hid the root of your power."

Of course they didn't. No Underhill Lord could even begin to understand the thought processes behind where Len's hidden it, and their human servants would be slow to turn on Len who has made their lives so much better.

"So?" Len says.

"You have the throne," his mother says. "The Hill is ripe -"

"I nominate you as my proxy," Len says, cutting through the crap. Her eyes widen: it is what she desired, that much is clear, but she did not expect it to be given so easily. Len had not been particularly forgiving when they last spoke. A Lady of the Hill to the core, his Sidhe mother, she did not understand how a human's anger can pass and fade and be mastered. "If you give me your oath that you will aggregate to my power as you can, lest you think it would be ill for my interests."

She hums. "And when you return, you will reclaim your proxy?"

Len snorts. "Yes, of course. But in the meantime, I've got the feeling your power'll grow quite nicely."

She smiles, and her teeth end in very sharp points. "Very well. I will be your proxy. How long think you that you will be gone?"

"As is my will, of course," Len says scornfully. A blind man could tell he would go in pursuit of his Rogues, of course, but he knows the Hill will not think of it for all their mastery of politics. Why put in the effort to seek and gather people who have once before failed you? There is no word for friendship among the Sidhe. "There is treasure to be sought in the world of men."

"You did always enjoy that game most of all," she says. "Very well, my son. Sleep, and strengthen yourself."

"I'm fine," Len says. He knows how treacherous time is Underhill. "Send in a servant."

"A sprite?"

"Human."

"Very well. Be well, Lord."

She sweeps off, her dress like a coiled oil slick around her, petticoats of rainbow and a train of a moonless night. 

Typical Underhill fashion.

Even as she closes the door, it opens once more. "Lord," the man says as he steps through. "Well-met."

Len smiles. "McCulloch."

The human servant, Evan McCulloch, best known for his peerless navigation through the Hill's geography, bows flamboyantly, a feathered cap in his hand. He'd been benched during the job that had gone so wrong, to his benefit and detriment - his memory he kept, but the freedom he won with the Rogues he lost. 

"Evan, please. Now tell me - how is Scudder, my oldest friend?" Evan asks, his heavy Scots accent unmistakable. It's not his fault he was stolen from the 18th century. 

"Don't know," Len says. "I think we were fighting."

Evan snorts. "Of course. How can I help?"

"What's the conversion?"

"You've slept too long for a quick return," Evan says reluctantly. "A year and a day, that's probably your best bet."

"Great," Len says, shaking his head. "Good to know, I suppose. There's no helping it."

He gets out of bed, his legs still shaking, arms still weak, but mind sharper than it's been in years. "Will you come with me?"

"Now, really, my Lord," Evan says. "Was that ever in question?"

\------------------------------------------------------------------------

They go after Scudder first, Scudder and Rosa, Len's most problematic of Rogues. They followed him from the earth to the Hill and gained powers from it: him the tricks of the lake of shining mirrors, of navigation beneath the hill; for hir the tricks of the loom, mental ways and wefts that bent to her command. 

They thought they were metahumans, now.

They're hardly Len's favorite Rogues - that would be Mick and Lisa, of course - but they have the advantage of being precisely where Len knows they'll be. 

"Really?" Evan grouses. "Iron Heights, they call this place? Maybe next time they'll just call it 'No Faeries Wanted Here' and be done with it."

"No faeries _are_ wanted there," Len says dryly. "It's shot through with iron, just like STAR Labs: it blocks what the humans call metahuman abilities."

"Is that a thing that men now know?" Evan asks. "Have humans so developed? Or is it only that they've stolen drinks from the muses' pool?"

"The Lords and Ladies of Underhill put a cup of forgetting-water at the center of the explosion," Len says. "Every fae-touched man or woman in the area lost their memory of the Hill, and so became very confused when they found themselves with powers that no man has, and the humans had to explain that to themselves somehow. Metahumans is what they came up with. Now stop dragging your feet and get us into that prison."

Scudder is raging inside his cell while Rosa rolls hir eyes at him from across the way. Len reflects that Scudder never did seem to run out of energy - presumably why Rosa liked him so. 

"Hello, lady and lord," Len drawls, as he turns the corner from where Evan is keeping the window to Underhill open in a bathroom mirror and grumbling loudly the whole while. 

"You!" Scudder shouts, and even Rosa seems enraged. "You bastard, you tried to ice us!"

"A friendly fight between crew," Len says dismissively. 

"Friend - _friendly_?!"

"Let me assure you," Len continues as they splutter. "This time, when I ask if you want out, I mean it in a very literal way."

"You'd be willing to break us out?" Rosa asks warily. "Why?"

"Because you're my Rogues," Len says. "And also because you'll do me the favor of listening to my spiel if I do."

They exchange glances.

"Fine," Scudder agrees. Rosa nods.

"I want your oath."

"Our _what_?"

"Your oath," Len repeats. Talking about such things with people who have forgotten the ways of the Hill is annoying.

"What does that mean?" Rosa sneers.

"Just say 'I give you my oath to hear you out until you’re done' and be done with it," Len suggests. 

"Fine, fine," Scudder says. "Oath's yours."

"Same," Rosa says. "Can we get out now?"

On the other hand, there are some advantages to it, too. Len only regrets that forgetting-water counts as impairment sufficient that a listening-contract is probably the most he'd be able to bind them into. 

Len opens the cells with the key he lifted from the guard on his way here.

"How do we get out now?" Scudder asks once the door is open.

"Bathroom," Len says.

They complain the whole hallway there, the ingrates, right up until they get there and see the pathway into the Hill.

"Another meta...?" Scudder asks.

"Hallo, ye old pigsty," Evan calls out. "How's it been? Swanning around without me? Wager I know the Hill better than you, now."

Scudder staggers forward, drawn by the memory he can just about feel bubbling under his skull, and Rosa follows after.

The magic-thick air of the Underhill has them vomiting up the forgetting-water within minutes. 

"Jesus fuck," Scudder gasps. "That was _vile_! That was - fuck, McCulloch! How've you been, you dirtbag? Still drunk on moonwine?"

"Oi, I've learned my lesson!"

"I'm still bitter you tried to kill us," Rosa tells Len.

Len arches an eyebrow at hir. "Really?"

"No." Ze inhales deeply the air around hir, flickers briefly into Roscoe instead of Rosa before settling back. "Being non-binary in Underhill is so much better that I forgive you."

"Good. Because your next assignment is going to be making sure my mom doesn't ruin the place while I'm gone."

"Oh?"

"I've made her my proxy."

Rosa starts grinning. "Did you mention the downsides that you created to that position?"

"Oddly enough, no," Len says, matching hir grin. "What Lord of Underhill would give away power over himself to another?"

"Sam and I will keep an eye on her," Rosa promises. "You go bring the others home."

Len nods. That's just his plan.

\------------------------------------------------------

The plan starts easy enough. Shawna isn't far, nor Mark, and reminding them of their time Underhill is even easier; they were both human servants to the Lords there, freed by Len's efforts, and it soothes the hurts and losses they suffered - Mark remembers that he lost his brother centuries ago, and Shawna recalls how her parents gave her to the Hill in the hope of stopping the plague from killing her other siblings. 

Lisa is -

"You're not dead!" she exclaims.

"Who told you?" Len asks.

"Mick, of course. He said he saw you die in an explosion, a year back."

"Oh, great," Len grumbles. "He's gonna kick my ass about misleading him."

"Almost certainly."

So that was easy enough, but getting her to come through to Underhill took near on a week before he proved he was in good faith.

He'd never force her into anything.

"At least you killed Dad," she says when she's finally breathing in Underhill air once more. "That's something."

"He broke your heart," Len says. "Seemed fair."

"You faeries and your obsession with balance," she laughs, and leaps into the air, light as a feather on skates that travel through the air, clad in ribbons of gold.

His beautiful Golden Glider.

Len spares a thought to wonder who Cisco was before the explosion, that he remembered her name - Len suspects that he was the unfortunate Lord that had been duped into placing the forgetting-water at the center of the explosion and so lost his memory, but that could have been part of another Sidhe Lord’s plan - and yet another to wonder about the original origin of Barry, Len’s Scarlet Speedster, whose powers, self-righteousness, and propensity for lies spoke of the Seelie Court.

Not Len’s Court, but someone’s. 

But those are thoughts for another time.

First, he has to get his Rogues back together - and he has, all but Mick.

"Go get him," Lisa urges.

"Traveling through the timeline," Len says, scowling; the time ships of the Time Masters are built of ores mined Underhill, earning by that manner immunity to the passage of time in the same manner, and, more irritatingly, immunity, too, to the tricks of its residents. Even McCulloch couldn't find them. "As soon as they stop, I'll be there."

He tries -

Oh, how he tries -

But they're always leaving by the time he arrives.

Even when he goes backwards in time to try to catch them.

Len snarls in frustration.

This is no mistake, no coincidence. Someone is trying to _keep_ Mick from him.

Len will find them, oh he will, and he will hurt them, whoever they are, for daring. Len may be only halfling born, but he is still the Lord of Lords of his ken, with dozens of knights who swear him grudging allegiance, and he will not be so denied. 

"I'm done," he announces when he returns home. His Rogues crowd his palace once more, where his mother is crowned in laurels of oak in his place and reigns in his name, and the whole lot of them - Rogues, mother, petitioners - all turn to look at him.

"You have given up your search?" his mother asks, the slightest of frowns wrinkling her forehead. Len is unsure if she disapproves of his failure to achieve his objective and returning to claim his throne or if she's actually surprised at the thought of him stopping before Mick is found.

No matter.

"Of course not," he tells her.

"Then what?" the Glider asks. 

"Someone or something is keeping Mick from me," Len says. "Whether rival throne or timeline, I don't care; it's intolerable."

The Rogues all begin to smirk. His mother frowns.

Len smirks with them.

"Call out the Hunt." 

\--------------------------------------------------------

The Hunt was always Mick's domain – the sorcerer, the lover of violence, passionate in judgment and vengeance upon those so foolish to put themselves in his domain. Even the Kronos armor which the Time Masters fit for him bore some resemblance to the one which he donned for the Hunt, an unconscious echo of the terrible fear which swept before him as he rode.

Mick's domain.

But Len's not too shabby at it, either.

They ride forth, he and his Rogues and the howling madmen of his Court, the Lords and Ladies of the Underhill casting off their pleasantries and manners to reveal the beasts they are beneath, all ready to wallow in blood and fear like they have not in far too long.

It is the privilege of the throne to call for a Hunt, after all, and Len's bout of amnesia had kept them from their pleasures. They will ride for him, his Seelie Court, and not care to what purpose they go so long as it keeps to their rules.

They ride.

They ride - and ride -

And not even the Waverider, fleeing into the timeline, jumping into time after time, can escape the merciless hounds of the Hunt.

The Hunt corners that ship in some forgotten echo of time, a curve of the time stream meant to hide them from their pursuers, a hasty landing in some long-forgotten corner of the world.

Len wonders how Rip Hunter sold this frantic bid for freedom to his crew - or perhaps it was Sara, now, who was captain?

It doesn't matter.

_Someone_ is going to pay.

And when the Legends - cornered at the last - spill forth from the Waverider to face Len, armored and silent, at the head of his legions, when Len sees Mick's face, pale and drawn, head ducked low in distress, shoulders pulled up tight in an effort to protect himself -

Well, Len's not feeling too picky as to who.

"What have they done to you?" he asks, his voice echoing beneath his helm. 

"I don't know what you mean," Sara says, defiant, white and pure at the head of her team. 

But Rip Hunter - and he is there, recently returned from some voyage - winces.

Just a little.

Len abandons his steed and strides forward, pulling off his helm and casting it aside, demanding again, "What have they done to you?"

The Legends are taken aback. "Snart?" Sara asks.

"Another one?" Palmer asks.

Mick says nothing. His eyes are dull.

"You took him from me," Len says, shifting his focus. "You _kept_ him from me - my Rogue, my _partner_ \- did you think there would be no reprisals?"

"Leonard," Sara says, voice aiming for gentle but coming out confused. "What are you talking about?"

"The Hunter knows," Len says. "Doesn't he."

It's not a question.

"Rip?"

"I assure you," Rip says stiffly, still playing the innocent to his crew. "I have no idea -"

"Oh, come off it," Len scoffs. "You still think you will salvage this situation? How often have you lied to them, that you think they will not doubt you?"

"We have been through more than you know," Rip snaps at him, a spark of temper. 

"Rip," Firestorm says. "What's he talking about?"

"Rip Hunter," Len says mockingly. "Grandson of Herne the Hunter himself, son of the Gold - do you think I did not counter you before I came?"

Rip's face twists in a sneer. "I think you claimed yourself a Seelie throne, for all your posturing," he says. "And I have ensured my safety with these innocents."

"Rip? What are you taking about?"

"He's here, my dear Sara, to kill those who hurt his partner," Rip says, and a smile too wide for a mortal face curls his lips. "Me in particular, of course, but to do that, he'll have to kill the whole lot of you, too, and he doesn't want to do that."

"We didn't hurt Mick," the black girl protests.

"Oh, humans," Rip says scornfully. "You're so easy to lead around - promise you an adventure, and you come on it; show you how to ill-treat a man, how to play on his every insecurity, and call it humor and you follow down the path with laughter on your lips."

"What - Rip..?"

"He feeds off strife," Len says, his eyes narrow. "Strife and pain - don't you recall how he urged you to be a killer, Sara? How he tried to split Stein and Jax on every mission? How he left Ray and Kendra together for two years, knowing she would leave him in the end? Don't you recall?"

"Yes - but that wasn't -"

"On purpose?" the Glider scoffs, breaking her silence. She stands at his right hand, where Mick usually is, or where Len is when Mick leads the Hunt - the leader and the right hand are the only ones of the Hunt permitted to speak during the chase. "Very little these creatures do is anything but on purpose. He used you to defeat Savage, his enemy -"

"- and how long did it take," Len asks, "for him to forget all about the family he so weepingly swore this was all for? How long before he came to you with another mission - how long before he said that he had a duty to rule the timeline? A week? A day? A few hours? Has he ever mentioned his family since?"

They are mute for a long moment.

"But -"

"He took Mick on purpose," Len says, knowing it now where he didn't before. "He took him, and he goaded him, and he enraged him - and then he had us leave him right where his fellow Time Masters could find him and torture him into compliance. How convenient, that cell to keep Kronos in - how useful it would have been to have when he was telling us we had nowhere on board to keep Mick -"

Their faces are white.

"He killed Sara," Jax whispers. "He went evil, but he was brainwashed - _was_ he brainwashed?"

"Hardly," Rip says with a sneer. "That insipid Legion of Doom - I just needed access to them long enough to plant a few ideas." He smiles at Len, all sharp teeth. "Your partner is not your partner, not anymore - I had Gideon give him visions of you for months, abuse and pain, and then my Legion called forth for him a changeling copy of you that abused him yet more. After months of all the jokes and the jibes that I taught my little team, he was ready to be broken by it."

Len snarls.

"You set up the Leonard Snart that came with the Legion?" the new man on the team asks, his voice small and sad. "Why?"

"What jokes?" Palmer cuts in. "What jibes -?"

Rip laughs, a big bellowing laugh; his teeth are sharp, his eyes are yellow, and his human shape is slowly losing its form. "You mocked him for his stupidity," he crows. "You made him feel useless, feel worthless; I taught you that. I showed you by example how to make yourself feel better by crushing him underfoot - how to disregard him - how to keep him isolated and alone - and you, my humans, helped me break him."

Mick says nothing.

"We didn't mean to -" Palmer starts, looking sick.

"What does that matter?" Rip scoffs. "Pain is pain, no matter how intentionally the infliction."

"But why?" Sara bursts out, betrayed and horrified. "Why would you do this?"

"His kind feed on misery," Len says. "And the misery of a sorcerer is heady stuff, isn't it, Ripteeth?"

Rip smiles his crocodile smile, which he got from his grandmother Jenny Greenteeth, the most fearsome of the river hags. "It is," he says. "Best of all, I scarcely needed to do anything to keep it going - Gideon helped guide the humans to name Sara as their captain, a woman trained by the Legion to be a follower or an independent, with me as her only guide to leadership. The chaos they have wrecked on the timeline, the misery she's caused - it's beautiful."

"That's not true -" Sara chokes, the realization that her captaincy was little more than a sham to hide Rip's true workings hitting her hard. "That's not -"

"You really think _you_ were in charge?" Rip asks her. "You? My Gideon guided you exactly where I wanted you." He laughs. "And now the Hunt has been called."

"You wanted the Hunt called," the Glider says.

"Oh, yes," Rip says. "They are fickle friends, your Underhill Lords and Ladies; they are as unfeeling as stone, but they are yet still Seelie and as such disapprove of the murder of innocents, and these humans -" his grin widens. "- I think the phrase humans prefer is, 'they knew not what they did'?"

"You think you can escape the Hunt by making us have to kill innocents to get to you," Len says. "And by ordering such a Hunt, you would make me give up my throne."

"An Underhill throne is a fine prize," Rip agrees.

"Pity you'll never get it," Len says.

Rip turns narrowed eyes to him.

"Innocents shall not be murdered," Len says. "It's not the Seelie way. But dazed, confused, horrified?" He bares his teeth. "As you say, pain is pain, no matter the intent. I don't object to a little chase. My Hunt - they're yours."

The Hunt moves forward all in one.

Len stays back, watching the Legends - all but Mick - be chased, the horror and terror of the gnashing teeth and slavering tongues of the Underhill driving them forward despite themselves - no one can resist the terror that rides with the Hunt, not even other creatures from beneath the Hill. Old Ripteeth flees just like the rest of them, and gets knocked around a fair bit, since the Hunt knows he can handle it.

When dawn threatens at last, Len holds up a hand, and his Hunt returns to his side. The Legends lie splayed upon the ground, panting hard, eyes still wide and bodies still shaking, gripped by the remnants of fear. 

Only Ripteeth has the strength to pull himself up. "You'll lose your throne," he hisses at Len. His voice isn't even pretending to be human: his skin is scaled and the color of greyish mud, his mouth too broad, frog-like and filled with crocodile teeth, and he stinks of bog-water. "You show weakness - you won't even avenge your own partner!"

Len barks out a laugh. "You idiot," he says, cool and sweet. "Why would I need to avenge him?"

Ripteeth stares at him, his cruel little Unseelie Underhill mind unable to understand.

"After all," Len continues. "He can do it himself."

Too late, Ripteeth twists to look at where Mick was standing, where Mick was gathering himself, gathering up rage and anger and hurt into a ball in his chest, and now stepping forward, that ball ripped free to float above his palm, a ball alight with burning hot white flame. 

"Bye, Rip," Mick says, and throws it. 

Ripteeth screams as he burns - feeling every blow, every jibe, every aggravation, his stone of a heart interpreting the emotional impact as physical pain, as burning - and then Mick steps forward and brings out his gun.

You never want to piss off a seventh-born sorcerer.

The ashes blow away until there's nothing left.

"He'll be back," Glider observes.

"Of course he will," Len says. "His kind are hard to eradicate. But he's gone for now, with his tail between his legs."

"Good," Mick says.

Len reaches out a hand to him, uncaring of whether it fits into his image as the throne. "Mick," he says. "My Mick -"

"I thought you were dead," Mick says. "How..?"

"My mother, of all people. When did you recall your sorcery?"

"There was a spell-cast involving a spear," Mick says vaguely. "Don't worry about it."

Len decides not to.

"Do you want a ride home?" he asks instead.

Mick looks at him, and smiles. "Yeah," he says roughly. "I think I would."

"What just happened?" Jax says groggily.

"Don't worry about it," Len advises him. "Good luck with the timeline. Might I suggest more teamwork? Democracy? Perhaps some sort of dual leadership?"

Mick smiles - a pale shadow of what he ought to have, but a good start - and says, "It works for us pretty well."

"See you around," Len says.

\--------------------------------------------

"You know you don't have to bend the entire power of the throne to spoiling me," Mick grumbles. "I'm _fine_."

"Of course you are," Len says soothingly. " _I_ want to do it. Let me."

"I want to go Abovehill," Lisa says, and smiles. "I miss Cisco."

"Bring him here for a spell," Len suggests, but the idea of Abovehill is already calling to him. It's very appealing. "Mick, I don't suppose -"

"Oh, all _right_ ," Mick says. "Let's go figure out what Barry was before he lost his memory."

"And that’s why you're my favorite," Len tells him. "But for Lisa, of course."

“That,” Lisa says primly, “goes without saying.”


End file.
